


Album

by salineshots



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Sick Pidge, mild whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 10:48:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17058368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salineshots/pseuds/salineshots
Summary: A gift forannoying-disarray-of-love, who prompted me for sick Pidge! Thank you so much!





	Album

When Matt felt her forehead for the third time in an hour, he should have expected it when Pidge pushed his hand away. She huffed and didn't spare him a glance, but she dug back into her latest project's motherboard. She was barely out of the hospital after the lions’ crash, and she was already caught up in her work.

“Take a break,” he implored her. “You're driving me crazy.”

“ _ You're  _ driving  _ me  _ crazy,” she grumbled back. “I'm almost done.”

“No, you're not.”

“All the more reason for me to keep working on it.”

“Pidge, you're driving  _ Mom  _ crazy.”

That got her to pause. Pidge took in a deep breath and sighed, and she left the tangle of wires, chips, and computer casing on the cluttered desk in front of her. Her room was an eclectic mess, just like her rooms had always been, and she was happy to stay in the Garrison apartment with their parents instead of the Atlas rooms with the other paladins. For the moment, at least. Her family needed her close by while she was recovering.

That recovery was going to take a while, judging by her pale face and cold, shaky hands. She had never been a fast healer.

“Mom made lunch. I’ll bring you back some soup,” Matt said, and that time, Pidge allowed him to ruffle her hair gently.

“I can…” She started to argue and reach for her crutches, but it was a token resistance. Even with her left ankle and shin in a cast, the crutches were hardly more than decoration. Standing and making the effort to walk would be too painful for at least the next few days; he had had to carry her to her desk chair. She let her hand go back to the edge of her desk when Matt shook his head.

“I know, Pidge. I’ll be right back.”

He heard Pidge grumbling and flipping through her computer for music on his way out, and he let the door click shut.

The kitchen wasn’t like home.  _ Home  _ was rubble, thanks to Sendak, but Matt could still see the china plates on the wall and the sleek, stylish furniture his parents liked. Home was picture frames, indoor plants, and old knitted throws over the couch. The Garrison apartment kitchen had the angles of a hotel and none of the familiar spices and olive oil smell. It wasn’t necessarily bad, but Matt disliked it on the mere principle of it not being  _ home _ .

He kept reminding himself that it was just a building. Home had always been the people inside it, and this little apartment currently hosted a handful more than usual.

Mom was busy with plates, and Lance was making himself useful with the silverware. Keith stood off to the side, arms folded and unsure where to place himself, and Hunk was at the table, turning through the pages of an album.

“The botanical gardens are  _ beautiful _ ,” Hunk said, presumably to Matt's mom. “What a great stop on a honeymoon.” Keith sidled a little closer to look over Hunk's shoulder at the photos, and Mom hummed a laugh from the counter.

“We toured museums all over the world. After the wedding, we had some time for our own pet projects, so we went researching.”

“You and Dad could use an actual vacation now and again,” Matt reminded her, and he stepped into the kitchen to help butter the rolls. She snorted-- as if anyone was going to get a vacation anytime soon.

Hunk turned another page. His face broke into a grin, and he looked up at Matt.

“Oh my god, is this you?” He lifted up the album to show a page full of the face of a very chubby baby. In most pictures he was either trying to shove something into his mouth or staring at the camera like he was looking into the face of God.

Matt surprised himself with how loudly he laughed. “That's me, yeah. Mom, I'm so glad you saved the albums.”

“What can I say? I'm old fashioned about some things.” Mom smiled, but she didn't look up from ladling soup into bowls. The digital copies of their photographs had been lost along with Earth's internet servers during the occupation, but the hard copies remained.

“These are precious.” Hunk switched albums and took another from the stack on the table. It looked like Mom had intended to sort them that day. When he opened that next album, he stopped. Keith went rigid behind him, and Lance, who had come to set the table, stilled and took in a small gasp.

It took Matt a second to realize which album they had found. Mom realized it at the same time, and she started to turn around in distress, but he patted her arm on his way past her to the table.

“That's Pidge's album, isn't it?” he asked.

“That's Pidge?” Lance was still so unsure about that, looking at the pictures of an especially small newborn in an incubator. Her tiny pink face was encapsulated by a respirator, and her hands looked too fragile to be real. Each picture was marked in the corner with her measurements for that hour.

“Katie was very premature,” Mom explained quietly behind him. Matt just stared down at the pictures. Hunk turned the page and found more of the same, with the newborn slowly gaining some strength. “She had a lot of complications. The first five weeks of her life were in the NICU.”

They knew now, so neither Mom nor Matt minded letting the paladins see. That, and maybe Matt wanted them to know. He wanted them to understand the weight of importance that being her brother carried. They were each her brothers now, in their own paladin way, and they needed to see this. The three of them studied the pictures in silence as Hunk turned the pages.

She kept finding herself back in the hospital. One year old, two, then three, and then she was diagnosed. She was underweight and short for her age at any step of the way.

She had respirators. She had white paper bands around her wrists. She had bouts where she worsened, slews of new medicines and IVs. In quite a few pictures, Pidge looked sullen or resentful, but she was always stubborn. Resilient.

She brightened up in the pictures where she had books. She played with Bae Bae, and her nose crinkled in the pictures where she laughed. In what Matt recalled as one of her longest hospital stays, a photo showed the two of them sitting on her bed and constructing a model solar system. There was light in Pidge's eyes.

Finally the hospital stays gave way. She still looked feeble in the pictures of a zoo visit, an eighth birthday, and then a road trip across somewhere with a flat yellow horizon, but she gained some strength. The happiest pictures were in the labs when she was allowed to visit their father's work, and when she was hanging out with Matt. He took some pride in that. That had to mean he was doing something right. 

“Oh, god.” Hunk broke the silence gently and kept turning the pages. “I… I had no idea. She never said…”

“Don't tell her you saw these.” Matt had to swallow and recover his voice. “It'll just… She's too familiar with where she's at already.”

“Yeah.” Lance didn't look up from the albums, but he reached down and took the corner of the book from Hunk. He turned it closed, and Hunk put it back into the stack with the others. “We won't say anything. She's been dealing with enough already.”

Keith wasn't saying anything, but Matt had rarely ever seen him look so crushed. Neither of them ever spoke about Shiro's illness, but Matt could only assume that this wasn't something Keith had been braced to see in Katie.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” Lance asked, and Matt was gratified by how sweet and earnest he was when it came down to it.

“Well,” Matt drawled, and he took the tray of soup and bread that Mom had laid out for Pidge. “She loves kicking your butt at KillBot. And Hunk, I should warn you, she’s working on a whole thesis about double modulation.”

Mom scoffed behind him. “Single modulation is  _ fine _ . My own children. I swear.”

Matt laughed under his breath, and his eyes turned to Keith. The Black Paladin was wrapped up in quiet distress, clearly searching for a niche for himself.

“And Keith?” Matt asked, and he watched him lift his eyes without straightening up. “She doesn’t tell me everything. But you’re way better at talking to people than you think.”

It turned out that praise flustered Keith easily. His cheeks reddened, and his gaze darted away.

“I’ll try,” Keith agreed quietly.

“That’s all it takes.” Matt smiled at them, and he left the kitchen with the tray.

He found Pidge trying to stand on her good leg to hobble back over to her bed. He sighed heavily, set the food down on the cleanest spot on the desk, and swept in to lift her up. She squawked and clung to his shoulders.

“Matt, I can do it,” she argued.

“Sure, but this is a lot easier for you,” he quipped back, and she relented. He set her down on her mattress, and she leaned back against the pillows stacked up against her headboard in a makeshift chair. When he set the standing tray over her lap, she started to eat slowly. The painkillers had always made her nauseated.

“Like old times, right?” she asked dryly. He couldn’t expect that she would always be upbeat, especially when she was in pain and disheartened by constant hospitalization, so he didn’t let it slow him down. He sat down on the edge of the bed, and he ruffled her hair as much as fixed it down against her head.

“Like old times,” he agreed. “You’ll beat it this time, too.”


End file.
